Red
Well-Known Member
“The best they can do is shoot the guy in the back?” That’s not the voice of some liberal commentator. That’s what a homeland security officer told me this weekend, one of over half a dozen who have reached out to express their alarm over the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and beyond.
I’ve listened to the stories and the beefs of immigration officers in Minneapolis across the country, and to a person, they all blame the shooter, one of their own. The major media is stuck on framing the killing of Alex Pretti as some national and partisan battle, highlighting Republicans breaking ranks, the NRA protesting, MAGA wavering, and Chuck Schumer doing whatever he’s doing, but no one is really capturing what the federal law enforcement officers on the ground are thinking. The truth is that they’re fed up and have been for weeks.
They paint a picture that is more Police Academy (or even Reno 911!) than a Gestapo on the march. Yes, they agree that Washington is a huge problem and are uncomfortable with the mission creep that is taking them away from actual immigration enforcement. But internally? Theirs is also a story of gung-ho 19-year-olds, drunken stakeouts, and senior officers disappearing into meetings and all of a sudden needing time off.
They are also frustrated with the narrative unfolding and the information war being waged from Washington, including the flamboyant defense of the shooting and other controversial moves on the ground.
“As much as I support this administration there needs to be more common sense in situations like this, not a knee jerk damage control narrative that does not line up with the evidence on video,” one Border Patrol agent said in a private chat group that was shared with me. “This individual was shot 8 to 9 times while unarmed.”
“We can’t always support what happens just because it’s one of us,” he adds.
An ICE agent was even more critical. “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting … ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal [means],” the agent said. “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”
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Several agents described receiving briefings about retaliatory threats to ICE inspired by the Minneapolis shooting. “Guys take it really serious, like we are fighting insurgents,” as if Minneapolis is Baghdad, an ICE officer said.
Though all of the federal agents I’ve spoken to this weekend support immigration enforcement, they indeed see the Minneapolis operation as something else entirely — an open-ended counterinsurgency in a faraway land and under an out-of-touch leadership in Washington more concerned with optics than immigration.
“This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall,” a Border Patrol agent said in the private group chat shared with me.
He closed on a plaintive note: “I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota, that battle is lost.”
“F*** this,” a senior ICE officer said about the shooting of Pretti.
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